The Perfect American

This is a late comment on "The Perfect American" being made into an opera. The book is totally about Walt Disney and the obvious passion he arose, being the charismatic leader that he was. With passion, there are always hurt feelings. The fictional animator who supposedly tells the story in "The Perfect American" is only an excuse to stir repressed male homosexuality, by his self-depiction down the line naked, bloody and with an erection before Walt Disney. By mixing real facts with fiction, the writer gets away with an utterly tabloid imagination, aimed at stirring and making money with the low feelings of those who are threatened by the fact that Disney, being only a man, accomplished so much. Disney is depicted as a sexually averse, square, highly neurotic and unforgiving person, an evident expansion on Marc Eliot's interpretation of his.It is totally shocking that the famous "litigiousness" of the Walt Disney co has not found a way to sue the German writer for defamation of character. For, with the word "fictionalized", the writer invents dialogues and facts to transmit a version of Disney that has the efficiency of any low blow: the efficiency of growing, like bacteria, on the weakness, jealousy and threatened vanity of others, becoming therefore believable to them. What a shame!
Someone commented on Robert Frost's article that like Lincoln, Disney became mythologized but that should not be a reason for his not being used in the way The Perfect American did. Try to use Lincoln that way and see if the American people, rightfully so, will not throw up with the abasement of that which, for them, symbolizes the good.

Disney Synchrony

The Mickey of the 30's was neither aggressive, nor cruel. In turning animals into sources of sound, in "Steamboat Willie", Mickey was only echoing the importance of music, as the single, pervasive heartbeat of the short. In "Plane Crazy", Mickey steals from Minnie, the most innocent, however daring, kiss. He "knew" that if she jumped out of the plane, she would not be hurt.
The early Mickey's behavior was an assertion of and a response to the infinite possibilities Walt Disney was starting to give animation. He was a reflex of the pantheistic world around him, a voice to resonate, in an amusing way, the choir of which he was the main part.
Mickey has always been the loudspeaker for Walt Disney's world of synchrony: for the generoxity of pure, all-encompassing meaningfulness.

Wholesome Disney

In the animation language developed by Disney, the granting of a maternal and paternal support makes up for the completeness of the sexual function in the human psyche. While its physical quality elicits the extension of oneself in fun, its inexorability and leading power satisfy the urge to fulfillment in obedience. Simply put, the eliciting of submission on one hand, with fun and pleasure on the other, concerns the granting of satisfaction as a result of obedience and also of assertiveness.

Disney Raw Strenght

The show "Fuerza Bruta" turns gravity relative, having stage as much vertical as horizontal, above the audience as well as on equal footing with it, through heavenly images. In bringing stage to such a revolutionary interaction with the audience, it is the direct descendant of Walt Disney's interaction with fantasy.
What would Walt Disney be doing today?
Perhaps he would be showing that stage can be bubbly and organic as well as technological, organic as much as artificial. He would be showing that upside down and downside up are the same, when pervaded by aesthetic appreciation. Above all, he would be showing, as he always did, that audience and stage, through the fraternal bonding springing from awe, are also one and the same.

Disneyssence©

Disneyssense is essence
Disneyssence is sensing
Disneyssence is ascension
Disneyssence is innocence
Disneyssence is sensation
Disneyssence is making sense
Disneyssence is sound and scent
Disneyssence is luminescence
Disneyssence is efervescence
Disneyssence is incandescense
Disneyssence is...

Disney's Otherwordliness

When Walt Disney, according to Neal Gabler (WD- The Triumph of the American Imagination, pp 300)said to a reporter,on the occasion of the making of Fantasia "If we quit mentally and artistically, we will begin to die", followed by his often asserting the idea that they needed to outdo themselves, they needed to keep "plussing", makes one think that life for him was a constant overcoming of oneself, that living was the self-consumption of sacrifice; that living was spirit.
That is what I write in my new book "Disneyssence".

Disney: America and Love of the Stage

The results of Disney's coupling of technology to fantasy were typically American, in joining the objectivity of artifice with the warmth of emotion, and yet universal, in expressing the power of childhood, hope and love. They were also typically American in the conception and creation of life purely for the embodiment of a story or of preconceived lines: for the stage, in a broader sense of the word. Life on stage, or, more precisely, life for the stage expresses in one goal ingenuity and faith, that is, the control of artifice, of creating for a purpose, and the passion of liberation, of the inexorability of storylines. Stage is simultaneously an assertion of mission fulfillment and destine, that is, of will and of forces greater than will.

Disney Bliss

For those who were born in the middle decades of the last century,(among them, the two kids shown in the picture, my sister Eduarda and my brother Edgar, whose Birthday is today)a search of Disney is also a search of oneself. That first moment of acquaintance with Disney fantasy, at an age when one was accessible, unprejudiced, and totally disarmed, was a moment of, more than happiness, awe, and also of healing. Awe, in itself, has a quality of spiritual healing. The Disney aficionados that made Walt Disney their personal hero concern, in great part , people that are grateful enough to recognize the real value of what felt miraculous: their literal seeing of fantasy; its communion with livingness. Their search of Disney has to do with the constant wish to resurrect that moment, as if resurrecting the best of themselves. Their search of Disney concerns their faithfulness to happiness and to innocence, simultaneously.

Disney Cuteness: "What A Guy!"

In the special features of the DVD "Walt- The Man Behind The Myth", Virginia Davis talks about her being directed by young Walt Disney for the first Alice, when she was a little girl. She describes the genuine delight of a small child in such experience and, in a pure, Minnie Mouse, girlish girl kind of way confesses Walt was her first love. The delicious part: Davis reaches the same conclusion, however innocently, dreamy and lady like, that provocative Peg, when referring to the Tramp, in Lady and the Tramp, seductively voices, as she dances away: What a dog!
Other than the radical divergence of attitude and intention between the two "girls", there is also one little difference, that doesn't affect, however, the wise content of their declarations: Peg's "What a dog!", in Davis' compliment of Walt, becomes:
" What a guy!"
It is (almost unbearably) cute!
Virginia Davis, no doubt, preserved, over all the years that passed since she acted for Walt, the Disney touch.

Disney's Full Circle

The faithfulness of Disney to the primitive is also his faithfulness to himself, to that original and therefore unquestionable part of oneself that answers to body and to heart in one. A rediscovering of origin that, as the coming of a full circle, is mystical. It relates to Disney’s reaching an abstract dimension of matter through matter itself, that is, through the fantasy of visual expression in animation and of multi-sensory experience in Disneyland.
Faithfulness to origin involves the innocence to being carried away, an acceptance of and receptivity to pleasure. Simply put, it might concern an immense keenness of the five senses, a love of life. But its rediscovery as end or conclusion demands genius: a gargantuan humbleness for work.